After seeing his team win five golds to finish top of the medals table at the Track Cycling World Championships in Minsk, Shane Sutton, the head coach, cast his gaze ahead to the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and declared that they are “heading for greatness”.

Sutton’s opinion is a ringing endorsement of a young crop of riders ideally positioned to maintain the phenomenal successes of the past two Olympics. “If you look to where we were at the beginning of the last Olympic cycle, we’re in a much stronger position, a much healthier position now,” he